


Disney Had It All Wrong

by kathierif_fic



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathierif_fic/pseuds/kathierif_fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been almost three hours since Phil pulled Clint out of the water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disney Had It All Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> a fill from the avengers_kink meme: full prompt: I want to read a fic where some how, Clint ends up in the water and almost drowns, whether that being knocked of a perch or thrown in by the villains or as a distraction, he almost drowns and Coulson saves him, and freaks out a little bit. Followed by some recovery and, if the author is so kind, a bit of You-Almost-Died-But-Didn't sex. :)

It has been almost three hours since Phil pulled Clint out of the dirty, grey water, three hours of sitting curled up in the little corner of Phil's bedroom with a scratchy, grey blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his knees pulled up to his chest.

He hasn't even taken a shower. He can't. The thought alone is enough to make his skin crawl, his breath catch in his throat, and his pulse hammer loudly and rapidly in his veins.

Three hours since he almost died.

On a general scale, _almost died_ has lost the edge of danger a long time ago. As long as he just almost died, Clint is fine with it. He is used to the almost, maybe too used, and maybe this is his punishment for growing complacent. 

For taking the almost for granted.

Clint Barton has never in his life been afraid of the things most people are afraid of.

Heights? He loves being perched up somewhere far up, has loved it for as long as he can remember.

Spiders? They have never bothered him. He tries to stay away from the dangerous ones (except Natasha, because no matter how hard he tries, he could never stay away from _her_ , she is special and has managed to burrow under his skin and wrap him in her spiderweb before he could even think of fighting, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late and she had caught him and wrapped him tight, not that he is or has ever been complaining) and he isn't bothered when one wanders across his face while he tries to sleep. He's never in his life shrieked at the sight of an arachnoid.

Death? He isn't afraid of dying. It doesn't mean that he wants to die, far from it, but he knows that it will happen sooner or later. He is fine with it. The same goes for small spaces, loss of limbs, and big animals.

He grew up in a circus. He knows how to handle big animals and how far away from them a sane person would stay.

The things Clint is afraid of are different. His father. The things Barney got involved with. Blue alien cubes.

And now, drowning.

He doesn't even know how long he was in the water. It can't be too long, but long enough for his air to run out and icy cold water trying to replace the oxygen in his lungs, his chest feeling tighter and tighter while his body was dragged down deeper into the dark cold water. 

To the bottom of the sea, to serve as fish food. 

The thought of Nemo gnawing on his bones is enough to make him shudder again, and he curls tighter into his blanket.

He's been sitting here for three and a half hours. He's alone, and there is a high probability that the other Avengers don't even know he's here. He was supposed to stay at Medical, but they cleaned his wounds - the deep gouges in his wrists and legs, where clawlike fingernails pressed into his skin until his blood bloomed out, like flowers in the water - and told him that he could leave, and so he did.

The Avengers are probably still debriefing and trying to figure out what exactly it was they were dealing with, Clint thinks, a hint of humor filling his thoughts and warming him from the inside. 

It was completely unexpected. Pirates, of all the things in the world they could've been sent out to deal with, even if they've been warned that these pirates had murdered the entire crew of a series of ships. Clint and Tony had been at peak form, joking and making plans to get Fury a pirate hat as a souvenir from this job. Coulson had that twitch in one eye, the one that told Clint he was toeing the line, that he needed to slow down with the quips and focus on the things that were really important, but the pirates, a sorry group of thin, desperate men, had been contained. 

They had just been waiting for clean-up, for SHIELD agents to take over, and it wasn't as if Clint had let down his guard.

He hadn't. 

He's still a professional, after all.

He'd seen movement in the water, and it had been enough to make him step closer to the ship's railing, trying to identify it. 

And then, he had been in the water. 

Drowning. 

Getting pulled down.

Clint is sure that none of the other Avengers had seen them. It had all gone down so quickly - one second, he's standing on a ship and deliberately teasing Coulson, the next, he's being dragged over board by long, pale fingers clenched tight into his body.

Fingers that looked almost human, if not for the gnarled knuckles and the clawlike nails. 

Clint grimaces at the memory of cold, hard scales brushing against his body, nails digging into his skin, the brush of hair like seaweed against him, and the faces.

Faces of women, wide eyes and even wider mouths, with sharp pointy teeth, but if Clint's honest, it's not the teeth that freaked him out the most, but the gills he could make out at the sides of their necks. Teeth, he can deal with. Gills - not so much.

The door opens with a soft hiss, and he can make out the sound of footsteps. They are deliberate, he knows, to let him know he's not alone anymore.

"Clint?" Phil asks, his voice only slightly raised.

Clint grimaces again. "Here," he calls out, and he's proud that his voice is even and doesn't betray any of the emotions still running wild in his brain.

Forget Nemo gnawing on his bones. If there's a movie that's going to give him nightmares forever now, it's Ariel, because now Clint knows what that little mermaid really looks like, and it's nothing like the movies.

Phil steps into the bedroom. He looks calm and well put together, business as usual, dressed into a black suit. His tie is a little crooked, as if he's pulled on it during his debrief, but nothing in his appearance or posture screams of the fact that he dove after Clint just a little over three hours and forty-five minutes ago, to liberate him from a swarm of fucking mermaids.

Hungry mermaids.

And here Clint is, curled up in a corner instead of getting a grip on himself. He hasn't even managed to shower. All he did was kick off his wet clothes, put on dry underwear and a t-shirt and quietly shake apart.

Some professional he is. He almost snorts at himself.

Phil's face goes through a series of emotions as he kneels down, his hand warm where it curls against the back of Clint's neck.

"I thought..." he starts, but he stops himself and pulls Clint close with enough strength to make Clint lose his balance and fall against his chest, not that Clint is complaining about it. Phil is warm and comfortable and he doesn't smell like seaweed at all.

"You thought what?" he mumbles into Phil's crisp shirt.

"I wouldn't let them have you," Phil simply says. It's a statement, one that leaves no room for doubt. "I couldn't."

Phil is warm and familiar, and Clint can feel himself regain some of his equilibrium even as he's curled against Phil's chest like a scared kid.

"Did you know that would happen?" he asks.

Phil's arms slide around him and tighten almost uncomfortably.

"If I had known this was going to happen," he says, his voice fierce and protective, "it would have been in the damn briefing, Barton."

"But you knew what to do." It's not a question. Clint is on a team with supersoldiers, gods and Natasha, and none of them reacted the way Phil did. Not even Tony Stark, and Clint has a hard time imagining Ariel gnawing her way through his suit, sharp pointy teeth or not.

Still, it was Phil Coulson who jumped after Clint without regard for his suit or the fact that there were bloodthirsty mermaids in the water, Phil who slashed at the creatures with the knife Clint knows is usually strapped to his forearm.

Phil who pulled Clint close and pressed their mouths together to share his precious air.

"I knew what to do," Phil agrees steadily. His voice tells Clint that everything beyond this point is classified and above Clint's paygrade, and he breathes deep and tries to banish the memories to the back of his mind, to get only plagued by them when he sleeps. His mind is starting to turn into a huge library of nightmares. JARVIS and his movie archive would probably get jealous if they knew.

He smiles wobbily at Phil and pulls back slightly. "You know," he says, "as far as kissing goes, that was pretty much at the bottom of the scale."

Phil's lips twitch, as if he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. "I know," he simply says and reaches out again. His palm slides along Clint's jaw, dry and warm and familiar, and then he pulls Clint close again, into a kiss.

It's brief and just a dry press of their lips together, but it's all they can handle at this point. Phil's hands are still touching him, and Clint knows, without having been told, that Phil is as freaked out about the whole thing as he is. Phil's actions speak a pretty loud and clear language right now.

"Fucking mermaids," he mutters as soon as they pull apart. "I'm gonna write a letter to Disney."

This time, Phil chuckles. "You do that," he says and finally pulls back slightly. "Come on," he says. "You need a shower."

The thought of being under water, even if it's just in the shower, causes Clint's heart rate to pick up again, but he hides it behind his most rakish smirk. "You gonna come and protect me, in case they come back?" he asks.

"Barton, I sincerely doubt that any mermaids will find their way through your showerhead," Phil replies sternly, but he's already lifting his hands to unbutton his shirt.

Clint licks his lips at the sight. He watches as Phil's skin becomes visible, patch by little patch, until Phil is shirtless in front of him.

He gets up on his hands and knees and crawls close, the smirk firmly in place, giving Phil a little nudge that lets him fall back on his ass, and then Clint is kneeling above him, his mouth on Phil's chest for a brief, gentle kiss against the scar there before he catches Phil's mouth in a real kiss. His tongue licks into Phil's mouth, tasting coffee and mint and _Phil_ , and one of his hands curls around Phil's shoulders, to anchor them together.

Apparently, Phil had the same idea, because his hands come to rest on Clint's ass, and he uses his grip to pull them flush together, only stopping to wrestle Clint's underwear and, with lots of fumbling and cursing, his own pants out of the way, and then, there is skin-on-skin contact, one of Clint's hands offering a tight space and a hint of friction, Phil's hands still on Clint's ass, and it's gloriously hot and out of control and _messy_ , all thoughts of a shower or making use of the bed right next to them forgotten.

When Clint collapses on top of Phil, his heartbeat racing for an entire different reason than the blind panic of the past four hours and twenty minutes, he buries his face against Phil's neck and breathes deeply, and Phil presses a kiss to the top of his head.

"I'm glad," Phil simply says. "That you're here. Now." 

Clint nods. "Yeah," he replies before sitting up, and yes, they are a mess. He uses his t-shirt to clean up the worst of it, and he doesn't object when Phil pulls him into the bathroom and starts the shower.

He knows nothing can happen to him here, at home, and he lets Phil pull him gently under the spray of warm water and against his chest.

He's safe here, and Phil is with him. With Phil here, everything is okay in Clint's book. 

Besides, he saw Phil put the knife, the one he used to get Clint out of the grip of the mermaids, right there, on the counter.

"Hey?" he asks, his eyes closed and his head tipped back, suds of shampoo running down his body.

"Hm?" Phil answers as he guides him back under the spray. His hands are still a little too tight, too controlled for Clint's taste, telling him that it will be a while until they get over the shock of what happened, but they're both here and everything is fine. 

Clint grins a little. "Thank you," he says, his own hands curled around Phil's shoulders as if he's afraid that, if he lets go, he will be dragged down the drain. "Thank you."

Phil doesn't reply. He waits until the shampoo is all washed off before grabbing Clint and pulling him close, and if they stay like this for too long, wrapped up in each other with no room at all between them, reassuring each other that they're still both there, relatively unharmed, and _whole_ , it's between the two of them.


End file.
